Fiber is coming to New Jersey, Soon

Verizon has big plans for its fiber rollout and someday it will come to New Jersey. VZ doesn’t say when it is going to arrive, except soon. But reports indicate that the service will, at least, initially be deployed in more than a dozen towns including Bergen and Passaic counties. NJ.com says that some parts of New Jersey were to see FIOS rollout last summer, but a state regulatory decision delayed the rollout.

Some analysts estimate less than 20 percent of Verizon’s entire 29-state territory will ever be served with the fat fiber-optic pipes. So far, the FiOS rollout is mostly targeting affluent towns, whose residents have plenty of disposable income and a propensity to spend on communications and entertainment. “Verizon doesn’t need to have a strategy to give fiber to everybody – they need a strategy to make money,” said Tom Nolle, a telecommunications analyst and president of Voorhees-based Cimi Corp., a telecommunications consulting firm.

This trend of broadband bias has become a hot button topic in recent weeks. Robert Sachs, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, recently said: “Serving only high- and middle-income neighborhoods in a community is both discriminatory and anti-competitive.” Meanwhile, Verizon’s rivals are pushing faster internet services – Cablevision and Comcast both recently increased the speed of their Internet service, without raising prices – the report says.